The Councillor for the Environment in Orihuela, Guillermo Cánovas, has announced that the mass of waste floating in the river in the city will be cleaned shortly.

Waste has been building up in the containment barrier near to the Ociopia shopping centre, but the process of removing the waste required coordination with the water company, Aguas de Orihuela, and the CHS water federation, so that water levels can be reduced to allow the recovery operation.

Cánovas explains that last month, on January 26 and 27, cleaning tasks were carried out for floating solids in the urban section of the river, the vast majority of which are plastics and cans. “We extracted eleven tons of waste that was found both in the Ociopia mesh and in the Azud. On the first day, the area was completely cleaned, however, the next day, we again found a significant amount of floating debris in these two areas, so we had to clean it again,” he reports.